And Then There Were Two
by MizJoely
Summary: A Sherlolly version of the last climactic scenes of the classic Agatha Christie novel, but heavily influenced by the 1945 movie with its much altered (and happier!) ending.
1. Who Is The Killer?

Prompt of the Day - 10/2/2019 Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" – because I always think of the movies when I see Mizjoely's U.N. Owen tag. – darnedchild

_I am using this wonderful prompt of the day because a) how could I not when I was mentioned in the prompt itself, and b) I think it fits beautifully with Sherlolly Halloween at 221B!_

_My story is totally based on the 1945 film version which has a happier ending than any other version (necessary for my sherlolly shipper heart). Large parts of the action and dialogue are pilfered from that film, which is __happily available to view in its entirety on youtube_

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Dead bodies. You'd think as a pathologist she'd be used to dead bodies, but trapped alone on an island with a killer? Said killer having been responsible for picking off so many of her fellow 'guests' - Adler, Moran, Moriarty, Smith, Norbury, Riley - one by one following the format a gruesome nursery rhyme?

She shuddered as she stood on the beach. No. She wasn't used to being surrounded by _that _sort of death.

"Come along, Molly," Sebastian Wilkes said as he passed her on the staircase. Her fellow survivor. The only one left alive besides herself, the acrobat Zhi Zhu, and the killer. Could it really be true that the newspaperman Charles Augustus Magnussen was the evil mastermind behind all these gruesome murders? Had he truly faked his death as Sebastian insisted he had?

_Of course,_ she told herself as she obediently followed Sebastian down the main staircase toward the patio overlooking the beach. _Who else could it be? _Sebastian had laid out the facts - deductions, he called them - with cold, methodical logic untill she realized there could be no other possible conclusion.

And now that he knew conclusively who the killer was, he'd assured her, the three of them would be safe. They would leave this island when the boat arrived in the morning, now that the storms had passed; they would lay the facts before the local chief of police; they would endure all sorts of questioning and cross examinations, but they would ultimately, all three of them, be exonerated.

He seemed extraordinarily assured of that fact; when Molly questioned how he could be so certain, he'd given her a wry grin and said that his brother was very well connected.

Small comfort, but enough to give her hope.

They crossed the main hall, heading for the door, neither of them noticing that there were now only two china figurines left of the "Ten Little Indians" on the dining room table.

Whatever hope Molly had been feeling died as they reached the patio and the truth behind the loud sound of what they'd believed to be a door slamming was revealed. One of the massive stone pyramids lay smashed to pieces on the paving blocks - and beneath it lay the lifeless form of Zhi Zhu.

All his acrobatic skills hadn't saved him in the end.

Molly turned away and shuddered. Yes, she was used to death, but not like this.

Never like this.

Sebastian remained as cool and impassive as always, kneeling down to examine what could be seen of Zhu's form beneath the scattered stone wreckage. Reaching down, he picked up a pair of binoculars, then rose slowly to his feet. "He must have been looking that way," he pronounced, staring toward the beach as Molly came closer, desperate to know how this had happened. How they had missed Magnussen in their multiple searches of the house. How he had managed to get on the roof in order to kill Zhu.

"But what was he looking at?" Molly asked as Sebastian raised the binoculars to his eyes.

When he made no answer, simply adjusted the lenses, she stepped next to him, peering over his shoulder in a vain attempt to see what was in his line of sight. "What do you see?" she asked. Then, when he lowered the lenses: "What is it?"

"It's impossible," Sebastian declared, looking both angry and perplexed.

"Let me see!" Molly exclaimed, grabbing him by the arm.

She thought he would continue to ignore her, but with a jerk of his head he replied, "You're going to see. Come with me."

She followed down the steep, rocky steps, down the beach, much more of it exposed now that the tide was out. He stopped in front of a pile of seaweed, still wet from the ocean, stooped down and picked up a familiar hip flask.

Molly's breath caught in her chest at the sight of Magnussen's prized flask, proudly embossed with his initials in sterling silver.

As he rose to his feet, giving her an unreadable look, Molly found herself looking around in a desperate hope...but no. "Look!" she exclaimed, pointing toward what she had at first taken for another mound of the ubiquitous seaweed.

There were strands of it wrapped around the body, for body it was - and that of the very man they'd believed to be the killer.

Or rather, who _she _had believed to be the killer.

"Magnussen," Sebastian pronounced. "He's been dead for hours."

"For hours?" Molly echoed, unwilling to believe what her training insisted must be the truth. She barely heard as Sebastian said something about there being no footprints because the tide had washed them away, instead focusing on the signs she knew so well: the pallid flesh, the blue tinge to the lips, the white, staring eyes...There was no way Magnussen could have killed Zhu.

Sebastian was wrong.

Or a liar.

"If he was...who killed Zhu?" she asked, stumbling back a step, her heart pounding in rising terror.

"Yes," Sebastian said, studying her coolly. "Who indeed? There are only two people alive on this island; you-" he pointed at her.

"And you!" Molly exclaimed, pointing right back at him.

"So this is how it ends, Molly," he said with a sneer.

"This is how it ends," she agreed, narrowing her eyes at him. "We come to the truth now."

"Yes, the truth, the entire truth," Sebastian agreed, taking a single step forward.

"Don't come any nearer," Molly snapped, grabbing the gun from her pocket. The on Sebastian - Wilkes - had given her, supposedly to protect herself from the madman who'd lured them all to this remote island.

The madman she now faced.

Sebastian Wilkes, businessman accused of murdering his best friend and business partner in order to steal the company for himself. The man whose luggage inexplicably bore the embossed initials "WSSH" although she'd simply assumed he borrowed said luggage for some reason.

The killer.

The man she'd started to fall in love with, curse her horrid taste in men. First Tom had tried to frame her for a murder she hadn't committed, thus landing her in the sights of the murderer who claimed to want justice against those who had committed horrible crimes and gotten away with them, and now Sebastian bloody Wilkes.

When would she ever learn?

While those thoughts flashed through her mind, Wilkes had stopped moving, smiling - smiling! - at the sight of the weapon in her hand. "Oh I see," he said, still grinning. "That's not quite right though, Molly. It doesn't fit into your nursery rhyme."

"Don't try to talk your way out," Molly snapped. "You made one mistake. Giving me this revolver."

"Look, I don't mind being killed," he said, sounding and looking as if he meant his words, "but I hate like the devil to be killed for someone else! I'm not Wilkes, my name is Sherlock Holmes."

Molly's brow wrinkled in confusion. "The detective?"

He nodded. "The very one."

"Why did you come here under another name?"

He shrugged. "For the case of course." At her blank stare, he elaborated, although not immediately in the way she anticipated. "My full name, for the record, is William Sherlock Scott Holmes. I deliberately used my own luggage as a clue once I realized I would have to take Wilkes' place on this little 'vacation' after he killed himself. He wasn't a friend," he added musingly, "but I was called in to investigate his suicide since I knew him from university. I knew as soon as I saw the letter from Mr. ;U.N. Owen' - a ridiculously simple riddle even an idiot like him could solve, even if the rest of you seem to have taken it at face value - that it had to have had something to do with it. So I came in his place. You're not a very good detective, even if you are a passable pathologist," he added with another sneer. "Zhu noticed the initials on my luggage right away."

"Do you expect me to believe that?" Molly asked, still wary, still suspicious - and very nearly terrified out of her mind at the thought of confronting a killer, terrified that she would have to use the revolver in order to save her own life.

She'd never killed anyone before and she desperately wanted not to have to do so now.

"Why not?" he asked easily. Too easily for this fraught situation. "There's something much more difficult to believe: that one of us is the killer, that one of us is Mr. 'Owen'." He jabbed a finger at his chest. "I know I'm not; no matter what my reputation may be as a rule-breaker or how I use my own judgement in whether or not someone deserves to pay for their crimes, I've never gone so far as to take the law fully into my own hands."

She couldn't help but notice that he didn't say he'd never killed anyone; his silence on that account was deafening.

She remained silent, however, as he continued his rapid-fire speech, this time claiming that he didn't believe she was the killer, either. That didn't make any sense; if he claimed he wasn't the killer, then who else could it be but her? Was he just trying to soften her up, make his move when she wavered in doubt as to the truth of the dire situation she now faced?

"Don't try to fool me, I know I'm not," she finally scoffed as he reiterated that he didn't believe she was the killer. "It's got to be you!" Rather desperately she added, "There's no other explanation!"

Unexpectedly Wilkes - Sherlock - grinned. "If you're so sure," he said, gesturing toward the revolver, "go ahead and shoot me!" When she simply stared at him, the grin widened. "You see, you have a doubt!"

He took a step toward her; Molly backed up, still pointing the revolver at his chest. "Don't come any closer! I'll, I'll shoot!" she exclaimed, but even she could hear the doubt in her voice.

"You won't," Sherlock said confidently. "You still trust me."

"Sure," she scoffed, "just like you trust me. As if I count"

"I do," he said lowly. "You do count, and I've always trusted you."

While she was still reeling at this unexpected confession and the sudden vulnerability in his voice and expression, he clenched a fist and turned away from her. "There's got to be an explanation!"

When he faced her again only seconds later, it was with eyes and mouth wide, clearly in the midst of some revelation. "Oh!" he exclaimed, snapping his fingers. "Yes, that's it!" Stepping forward he said, "You've GOT to shoot me!" He reached over and tugged Molly's wrist. "Now shoot!"

Reflexively, without meaning to, she did as he ordered, then let out a scream as his body crumpled to the wet sand.

If one were standing in the house looking down at the beach, the entire drama was framed in the dining room window. And if one were so inclined, one could easily step away from that window, over to the table where the circlet of china figurines had once held pride of place - until, one by one, each little indian had been smashed until only two were left.

And if this hypothetical person had actually witnessed the shooting on the beach, well, then they would very easily be able to smash one of the remaining two.

Leaving only the one for Molly to find when she reentered the supposedly-deserted mansion a few minutes later.


	2. The Killer Revealed

_A/N: Here is the final installment of this very condensed, ending-only Sherlolly version of Agatha Christie's _And Then There Were None_. Hope you enjoyed the ride and thank you to stlgeekgirl for reading it over for me!_

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Molly stepped into the dining room with a feeling of growing dread, barely controlling the trembling in her limbs at what she'd just done down on the beach. How had it come to this? How had she found herself in such an insane situation? Why hadn't she simply ignored the offer she'd received to take on a temporary position as coroner in such a remote location?

Why hadn't any of that set off any warning bells in her mind?

Because, she reminded herself as she stared at the single remaining figurine, up until now her life hadn't exactly been the stuff of mystery novels, her ex-fiance's clumsy attempts at framing her for murder aside. She'd believed all that behind her, a distressing chapter in her life closed once she'd been exonerated.

It wasn't her fault she'd been targeted by a madman who didn't believe in her innocence.

She turned away from the dining room table, and made her way slowly into the salon, stopping abruptly at the sight of a noose dangling from the ceiling. A noose that certainly hadn't been there before she and Sherlock had left the house and discovered Zhu's body in the courtyard.

A sound caught her attention, as surely it was meant to; whistling, seven notes of a very specific piece of music.

La gazza ladra. The Thieving Magpie.

She felt dizzy, disconcerted. She'd seen his body, seen his brains blown out the back of his head. He couldn't possibly have faked his death!

Could he?

Slowly, unwillingly, she entered the billiards room, just in time to hear the crack of the cue ball hitting the eight-ball. Watched as the black ball dropped into the corner pocket and the white one ricocheted off the side and rolled to the center. Raised her eyes to confront those of the killer, who'd risen from his crouching position and stood quietly, holding the polished wooden cue casually in both hands.

The madman who'd strangled, poisoned, crushed, chopped, and shot to death everyone else on the island except herself - and Sherlock, of course. But she refused to think about the undercover detective, not when she needed to focus on the madman in front of her.

Without looking up from the pool table, he spoke. "Billiards, as I said before, is a game of the mind, Miss Hooper. You came just in time for my last shot. And now, the game is over."

"Hello James," she replied quietly as he allowed the cue to drop to the felt covered table top. She suppressed a shiver as he held her gaze; how had she not realised how empty those dark eyes were, how shark-like? The eyes of a true predator. "Amazing job you've done, faking your death so well you convinced a trained pathologist it was real."

His lips moved moved in mimicry of a smile, but his eyes stayed steady and watchful. "Not so difficult when you have help." He shrugged his shoulders, rolled his neck. "Dear Charles did a marvelous job of adding to the confusion by 'falling into a faint' at the sight of my gory self, thus forcing you to focus on him instead of on me."

Molly couldn't help but agree, although she deliberately failed to do so aloud; it was clear that Professor Moriarty was ready to brag about his 'accomplishments' and she was not about to encourage him in that.

Well, perhaps a little… "It must have come as quite a shock when you turned on him," she said, allowing her reluctance to show. "Was he in on it from the start, or did you trick him the way you tricked the rest of us?"

"Tricked him," James replied easily, taking a step forward. Molly scrambled away, not willing to let him come any closer to her than necessary. Involuntarily her eyes flickered up to the noose hanging in the entryway, then back over to his grinning face.

As she moved he reached back with one hand and pulled his jacket from where it had been hanging neatly over the back of a chair. Took another step forward. Looked at the noose as well. "_One little indian left all alone, he went and hanged himself and then there were none,_" he crooned, quoting the grim little nursery rhyme.

But the 'one little indian' _wasn't _left all alone; did James have some escape plan formulated, some way of convincing the authorities that he was innocent of the multiple murders?

As if reading her mind, he chuckled and said, "Oh, not to worry, Molly dear, I've no intention of weaving myself out of this little web." He tapped the side of his head. "Brain tumor. Inoperable. Doctors told me I had only a year to live, which is why I concocted this enjoyable little game." He gestured as if to indicate the room in which they stood, and the manor housing it. "My uncle was a judge; one of his greatest regrets was that so many guilty parties had to be set free due to lack of admissible proof, even when he _knew _they'd committed the crimes. So I thought, why not do something for the old man, something he'd never have had the guts to do himself?"

"So you found a group of people who you believed had gotten away with murder, and gathered them together for this sick game?" She couldn't hide the contempt - or the fear - in her voice. "Why go to so much trouble and expense? Why not just, I dunno, pay someone to kill everyone instead?"

"Because that would be BORING!" he said, shouting the last word and startling her into jolting back a step. "And life is boring enough to stay alive through, why not make the ending at least a little more interesting? A little more...fun? Fun for me of course," he added, clearly anticipating her objection to his choice of words. "Why not go out with a..bang?"

His eyes flashed with a sort of wicked glee as he lowered himself into one of the room's comfortable wing-backed chairs. The one currently occupied by her cat, Toby. She tensed as he lifted him into his lap and began petting him, but said nothing, just waited to see what he'd do next. If he hurt her cat…

She knew by the taunting little smile on his face that James knew exactly what she was thinking, and forced herself not to react any further. God, this stupid game of his, so evil and twisted - why? What could have driven a respected mathematician into such murderous behaviour?

She couldn't help the sigh of relief that escaped her lips as Toby wiggled out of James' hold and darted under the billiards table. "So you faked your death and tricked Mr. Magnussen into helping you," she said lowly as James sipped his whisky from the glass set on the table next to him. "And you, you killed everyone on this island in the name of your dead uncle the judge - just because you thought it would be fun?" She shook her head. "That's crazy, you know that, right? It's insane!"

"Yup." He popped the P obnoxiously. "So it is. And before you ask, my dear, no, there's no other reason than what I've just given you - well, perhaps one other reason." His eyes bored into hers, almost hypnotising in effect as he half-whispered, "Who wants to go out alone? Every artist - especially a genius - has a certain amount of vanity. We all like the approbation of the public." He smirked up at her. "And you, my dear, are my very last public."

"Wrong on two counts -she's not the last and you're hardly a genius."

Molly's eyes shut and her hand convulsed on the cylinder of the revolver before she pulled it out and trained it on the stunned-looking Professor Moriarty.

She didn't need to turn around to identify the new speaker; she not only recognized the voice, but had been expecting - waiting for - him to show up at what he deemed 'the appropriate moment'.

"How- Impossible!" Moriarty almost screamed as he half-rose from his seat, face purpling with rage. "She shot you!"

"Yes, and someone supposedly shot you as well, yet here we both are," Sherlock said coolly as he strolled up to stand next to Molly. He laid his hand gently over hers, the one holding the revolver, gently easing her arm downward. "You won't need that, he's already planning to poison himself with one of these."

Molly cut her eyes to the side to see what he was holding: a small glass vial with two white pills inside. "How did you get those?" she and Moriarty both demanded at the same time.

Sherlock shrugged modestly. "It's not that difficult to move around when everyone thinks you're dead - but you knew that already, didn't you? So when you left your coat hanging oh-so-conveniently on the back of a chair with an obvious bulge in one pocket, how could I resist? Tsk," he added in mock disapproval. "Letting a pretty face distract you from the game, how very ordinary of you. Not like a proper genius at all."

"Oh, and I suppose you're one. A _proper _genius," Moriarty sneered at him, but there was a hint of something almost like admiration in his eyes, there and gone so quickly Molly thought she must have imagined it.

"Mm," Sherlock said, not at all modestly. "Something like that." Molly could have laughed at the way he preened, except she wasn't entirely sure it wouldn't devolve into a hysterical fit and so she kept her lips firmly clamped shut.

Slowly Moriarty relaxed back into his seat, still staring up at Sherlock. "The luggage," he finally said. "Knew it wasn't yours, but I didn't particularly care if you were the real Sebastian Wilkes or not, as long as you died his death. My great-uncle was the one obsessed with justice, after all. Careless of me not to check into your credentials a little deeper." He closed his eyes, snapped them open again. "Holmes," he pronounced with a snap of his fingers. "The brother who dabbles in crime solving."

Sherlock ignored the sneer in his voice as he gave an ironic half-bow. "At your service. Oh wait, not your service, at the service of _true _justice." He placed an arm around Molly's shoulder, and she leaned into him, relieved that this whole ordeal might finally be over soon.

"You're a bit too late to claim to be on the side of the angels now," Moriarty replied, not missing their show of trust in one another. "Considering the body count, saving one life is hardly worth bragging about."

"Saving the one _innocent _life on this island certainly is," Sherlock corrected him. "Tsk, tsk, Professor, seems you didn't do your homework very well. You'd have been better off luring Miss Hooper's vile ex-fiance here in her place. Sloppy work," he added disapprovingly. "And now you've got two witnesses who will swear before a court of law that you're the murderer." He glanced up at the noose, swaying ominously in the breeze from the open door. "Perhaps you'd prefer to spare yourself the humiliation of a public hanging and take care of the matter right here, right now?"

He glanced down at Molly, who was clutching his arm. "What do you say, Molly? A fitting end for the man who intended to coerce you into killing yourself just for the sake of making sure the nursery rhyme came out right?"

She shook her head, unable to speak for a moment. "No," she finally managed. "Let the police have him." Her gaze hardened. "He doesn't deserve the quick, easy ending he planned for himself."

Sherlock laughed aloud in sheer delight, squeezing her closer to him. "A woman after my own heart. No wonder I -"

"Fell in love with her?" Moriarty sneered. "And you call _me _ordinary."

Molly felt as if her heart had dropped into her stomach then vaulted its way back into her chest, beating harder than it ever had before. "Is it true?" she whispered, gazing up at Sherlock wonderingly. "Do you, have you - do you love me the way I love you?"

Sherlock hesitated, rolled his eyes, then let out a huff of annoyance before pulling her into his arms for a lingering kiss. "Does that answer your question?" he asked when the kiss ended.

Before Molly could respond with more than just a bemused nod, the sound of approaching footsteps capture her attention, and that of the two men. Like a flash Moriarty sprang to his feet, pushing Molly aside as he wrestled with Sherlock for possession of the vial of pills he was still holding in one hand.

Molly let out a startled scream as she fell to the floor, watching helplessly as Moriarty bashed Sherlock's head against the marble floor, holding up the small vial in triumph. She scrambled for the revolver, only to see him kick it out of her reach in a contemptuous gesture. As he pulled the cork out of the vial, however, a hand clamped down on his wrist. "What's going on here?" a voice demanded, and Molly looked up in surprised gratitude to see that the boatman had arrived...in the company of what seemed liked an entire platoon of policemen.

She closed her eyes and nearly sobbed in relief. The ordeal was over.

**Epilogue**

"So it was your brother who notified Detective Lestrade?"

Sherlock nodded. "When I went incommunicado, he suspected I'd run afoul of some murderous or vengeful - or both - former foe. Or worse, that I'd fallen back into old, bad habits." When Molly tilted her head inquiringly, he gestured toward the insides of his elbows. "Cocaine, a 7% solution, was once my drug of choice, the only way to slow my brain when it threatened to race out of my very skull." He gave her a rueful smile. "Or a way to pass the tedium when there was nothing for my mind to occupy itself with."

"Well, I'm just thankful you didn't opt for Professor Moriarty's 'solution' to boredom instead," she quipped.

Sherlock pulled a face. "Don't make jokes, Molly, they're really not your area," he chided her, but took the sting out of the words by taking her in his arms and dancing her across the floor of his flat, humming along to the tune of Glenn Miller's _Moonlight Serenade_.

Professor James Moriarty was dead, no longer a threat to anyone's life or happiness - and Molly Hooper and Sherlock Holmes were very, very happy indeed.

_"Sickening. Positively sickening."_

_From beyond the veil, the spirit of James Moriarty glowered at the sight of the two lovers as they swayed to the music, lost in each other's eyes. "I'll have to make certain they don't get such a disgustingly happy ending in their next lives."_

Oblivious to his plans for their future selves, the couple danced on...


End file.
